Recent hymnody sometimes focuses on subjects never acknowledged in most of the hymns of earlier centuries—often because the subject matter was foreign to the hymn writers. “God of Concrete, God of Steel,” written in 1969 by Richard G. Jones, is one example. The same thing cannot be said about songs that celebrate women; for the most part, women have merely been ignored over two millennia.
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The use of inclusive language in contemporary hymn texts has gained fairly wide acceptance in recent years. However, the selecting and editing of existing texts for inclusiveness have been far more controversial: should we insist on unequivocally neutral pronouns and titles to refer to God, the people of God, or both? How do we make judicious changes to meet poetical, legal, and aesthetic requirements while still maintaining (and, in some cases, possibly enhancing) the intelligibility and integrity of the original text?
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My focus as a liturgical artist is the New Testament. A Greek verse is integrated into each of my watercolors, linking viewers to its earliest form. The use of Greek reminds us that the Scriptures come to us through the vehicles of cultures and languages other than our own; the presence of the text in an unfamiliar script hints at the global nature of God’s grace to humankind.
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When Minneapolis-based calligrapher and graphic designer Diane von Arx Anderson was invited to work on The Saint John’s Bible, the first handwritten illuminated Bible in 500 years, it did not ever cross her mind to refuse.
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A believing coworker recently commented on her intellectual agreement with biblical equality. But she went on to explain that she would not personally want a woman as pastor, simply because that is not what she is accustomed to seeing.
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The pace of CBE’s ministry is surging breathlessly. Organizations, churches and institutions ask us to hold booths, speak at events, and join their board of directors. We have more requests than we can possibly respond to. The deluge is both exciting and overwhelming. More importantly it represents a change. It suggests that the message of gift-based rather than gender-based ministry is in demand as never before. How did this happen?
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Acclaimed author Walter Wangerin Jr. discovered the power of story in a childhood Sunday School class.
“I remember that a teacher of mine would tell a biblical story, and I literally just packed up my bags and moved into that story,” said Wangerin. “I was Zaccheus in the tree.”
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The Uptown neighborhood of Chicago is a crowded urban setting where the skies are smudged with pollution, and pavements have stifled out most greenery except weeds and a few stunted trees. Is this a place where the message of God’s care for humanity can be heard?
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Many of our readers write to ask for new insights, information, and resources about biblical feminism. The Chinese say that one peep is worth ten thousand words. Cindy McKeen kindly supplied us with the accompanying illustration; and for those anxious for new material, it may well be worth its weight in gold. The statuette which the drawing depicts does not strike one as a first-class piece of art. To be quite truthful, it seems somewhat clumsy; and the concept of one woman standing upon the head of another is downright grotesque. Nevertheless, this piece and the forty-odd similar executions of this same motif have much to tell us. Usually two which were almost identical were found together, but there are differences in form and decoration between those found in different grave-sites. Always the woman stood within the crown upon the lower female head.
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